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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with mashed potatoes, chocolate, walnuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,147 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Potato Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk, melted chocolate, hot mashed potatoes, spices, flour, a little salt, and chopped walnuts. Mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the batter.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into greased cake tins and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Once cooled, ice the cake with marshmallows.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites whipped into peaks give the cake lift and an airy, tender crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps give the cake a light, fine crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Hot mashed potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before baking makes the cake dense and flat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, walnut, milk, chocolate, cinnamon):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, walnut, milk, chocolate, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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